


Run Aground

by Windian



Category: Tales of Graces
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 19:11:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16143677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Windian/pseuds/Windian
Summary: Cold mists roll down from the mountains to the town of Lhant. With them, they bring memories Hubert would much rather forget.





	Run Aground

Last night I dreamt I went to Lhant again. The shingled roofs with their rustic weather-vanes, emerging like ship-masts from the mist that comes down from Fendel in springtime. Spring is long to wake in Lhant. While in the Capital the crocuses might be in full bloom, only snowdrops poke their heads out of the hard earth, even into March. Only a month ago there might have been frost. If you lost your way and stumbled towards the Fendel border, you'd find yourself in winter. But then, there's always winter in Fendel.

If you were kind, you might call Lhant quaint. In truth, it is a humble, dull sort of place. Compared to the crystalline fountains of Yu Liberte, it is downright dingy, a mere footnote in Windor's geography. But the fog, oppressive in the daytime, takes on a different quality in the silent hour before dawn. Pale, translucent, the town-- hardly more than a village-- adopts a new air. For that hour, the promise of something hangs suspended, only to be dispelled by the dawn.

The gate to the manorhouse swung open without being touched. I was not alarmed; I was after all, dreaming. The lawn, neatly kept as I remember, was damp with dew from the mountain fog. It brought back memories of wet hems and grass-stains and wild tumblings-about with my brother and his playmates.

The great doors opened. Inside, nothing had changed. Nothing had moved. It was as though the mist that had slid down from the snow-fields had spell-locked the town of Lhant into place. Nothing stirred, not even time. My heart beat fast in my ribcage.

At this hour, everyone should be in bed, but a ribbon of lamplight spilled out from underneath the door to my father's study, a bright draft-stopper.

I opened the door. Before I should never have dreamed to do so without knocking.

Father was at his desk, the great oaken thing with legs carved into the shape of griffons, which I and Asbel would curl ourselves around, before we were old enough to know better. The little eleth light made his face look very bright, terribly white. It cast a long shadow.

“Hubert,” Father said, without looking up from his work. “So you've returned.”

“Yes,” I said.

“I imagine you're angry with me,” he said.

“Terribly,” I replied.

I wondered if he might take a stab at an apology, or, like in my other dreams, he would tell me I was worthless, unwanted. Neither gave me any pleasure, thought if it must be one I'd prefer it was the latter, for at least then I could wake angry, instead of unhappy, burdened down by what ifs and what could have beens. But as I took a step forward, the light shifted. Father vanished, and I faced an empty armchair. Or rather: he was never there. No more than a trick of the light, a mirage in the mist. It was easy to mistake a shape in the fog.

That empty armchair gave me such a shock that I awoke in my cabin. It must be dawn, but the light through the porthole was strangely muted. I dressed swiftly, my fingers stumbling over my buckles. Foolish. Ever since the President had given me this mission, I'd been burdened by such nonsense dreams.

I left my cabin, to find the ship penned in by a fierce sea-mist. The ship moved slowly through the gloom, men at oars, the cabin boy sat atop the prow, lamp in hand, to spot the way. I shivered.

“Lieutenant,” the second mate greeted me with a swift salute. “Fog came in swiftly. Since then, the wind's dropped. We're likely to make slow progress till it shifts.”

“Blast it. Can't be helped, I suppose.”

I leant over the side of the ship, looking out. There was little to see. Except-- for a moment, I thought I saw the shingled tops of buildings with their weathervanes, the turning blades of a great windmill. Panic lodged like a blade between my ribs.

“Hold!” I shouted. “Weight the anchor. It's Lhant. We'll go aground!”

A flurry of movement. The anchor dragged against the sea floor, and caught. The ship had stopped.

Lhant vanished into the mist. I realised-- with a bright flush of foolishness-- that it had never been there. A trick of the mist, the vestiges of my dream clinging on to my waking hours. At least, I blamed my dream, as I blamed my father. What on earth had it meant that he'd been there, and then gone? It left a sour taste in my mouth.

“Hoist the anchor. Lieutenant’s dreaming,” said my infernal cousin, shooting me a grin. Of course, he would appear to bask in my humiliation. I didn't share his humour. “Go have your morning coffee, Hubert.”

I ignored Raymond. It was the most effective way of dealing with him. I took my coffee in my cabin. Black, infernally strong, “tar,” Marian had called it, on one her outings she'd insisted on. We'd sat under the parasolled shade outside the hotel, during that part of the morning where the heat of the desert creeps into the city, underfoot, under the collar of your shirt. “Only you would have coffee in this weather, Hubert,” Marian said, in a manner that made it sound part an insult and part compliment. I could never understand her.

In my years in Yu Liberte, I'd come to enjoy the desert; the dry heat, the cool nights, the smell of wet sage that rose like a forgotten memory after the summer monsoons. There was fog on the coasts, but it never rolled its way to Yu Liberte, the jewelled city that made up the beating heart of Strahta. In that city, I'd allowed myself to forget the crunch of frost underfoot; the surprise of dew-decked snowdrops, the first of the season; mist drawn down from the mountain.

I'd let myself forget Lhant, except that I saw now: Lhant had never forgotten me.

 


End file.
